Saturday, August 2, 2014

A Dragon Koi and a Mechanical Hummingbird Papercraft Concept

The last week or so has been rather text heavy, but there have been a few standout sketches that I wanted to take the time to share.

Dragon Koi Sketch

"Dragon Koi Sketches" - Completed on July 25th, 2014

Probably around twenty years ago or so, I recall writing about a dragon koi in one of the stories I was working on at the time. The idea and anatomy was never really fleshed out beyond the concept that it was equally at home in both water and air, and could somehow breathe in both environments.  I recall sketching it once or twice, but nothing really came of it until 2005 when I sculpted an extremely small dragon koi for a 1/4 Scale Model/Miniature Wizard Retreat. This project was a labor of love that created from scratch as part of an Art Direction project for college. I.... may have gone a bit overboard with that project...


 

I'm hoping one day to collect some of the better photos I have of the model, but in the meantime, you can see the dragon koi in the water on the left photo, and you can see more photos of this project here on my very old and outdated website. In 2005 through 2006 I even worked on a walkthrough on my LiveJournal days, but it appears as though I never posted the final shots! I'll have to see about fixing that...

As a side note: it was from this project that I learned the value of knowing what you plan to do with a project once you're done with it. ;)


 Papercraft Mechanical Hummingbird Concept


 "Papercraft Mechanical Hummingbird Concept" - Completed during December of 2013

Around the holiday season last year, I toyed with the idea of sending out cards that included a papercraft mechanical hummingbird that the recipient could assemble themselves. The project never made it past this postage stamp-sized thumbnail, but perhaps one day... 

I had actually planned to have areas in the winds and belly that could be cut out and lined with colored acetate in order to create a stained glass-like effect, but after some consideration, it seemed that I might be overambitious in my design, and it seemed unlikely to me that many of my family members would be interested in a project that required so much detailed cutting assembly. That said, I still hope to do a papercraft like this one day, and I think it would be a fun challenge to sculpt a mechanical hummingbird as well!
Have you been up to any fun projects lately?

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